Cydia is a thriving underground market for iPhone applications rejected or disallowed by Apple. The store works much like the normal App store, but is only available on jailbroken phones.

Feel free to swear, use overlapping apps, or other forbidden fruit -- only on Cydia, though

Prominent iPhone hacker Jay Freeman,
known as "Saurik", saw a booming business market where
Apple saw content
to squash. Five months ago he launched
a reinvigorated Cydia, an underground app store available (only)
for users with jailbroken iPhones. The store caters to all the
apps that Apple rejects.

So just how big is the market for
these underground apps? According to Mr. Freeman of the 40
million iPhone and iPod Touch, approximately 4 million are jailbroken
and have Cydia installed. With only 15 paid apps on the store,
it earn $220,000 in its first five months. And the site
receives 470,000 visits a day.

Some of them might be coming
for Google Mobile, a port of the rejected
Google Voice. Following Apple banning Google Voice, Sean
Kovacs, an iPhone developer commented, "Looks like Apple and
AT&T pissed off a lot of people. I’ll be releasing GV
Mobile v1.2 on Cydia for free today or tomorrow."

Now
Google Voice is freely available via Cydia. Kim Streich, a
developer whose app 3G Unrestrictor earned $19,000 in sales in two
weeks on Cydia. She developed a $2 app, which allows
SlingPlayer,
the app that allows you to broadcast TV to your phone to work in 3G,
something Apple banned in the official app. She states, "People
are so annoyed by Apple and their shit, and if you give them
opportunity to go around it, then they’ll even pay for it.
It’s just amazing what you can do on such a little cellphone, and
Apple just forbids customers from doing these things, and it’s just
a shame. That’s why I’m so happy there’s a Cydia
store."

Any developer is free to contact Freeman and
quickly have access to the store. This setup is much more
hassle free than Apple's miles of regulation and potential rejection
-- though it is much more unregulated as well. And while "the
sky's the limit" sort of stories of apps making millionaires
won't be found on the site yet, the potential of cashing in big on
the new site is very real. With less apps in the store and a
smaller, but more loyal fanbase, the site is a promising
ecosystem.

Jonathan Zdziarski also praised the site. He
had an app iErase, which sold only 91 copies on the app store.
A reworked Cydia version has sold 694 copies. He states, "I
guess you could say the App Store is kind of like Wal-Mart, with more
crap than you’d ever want to buy. And Cydia is like the
general store that has everything you want and need, from fresh cuts
of meat to those homemade cookies you can’t get anywhere
else."

Rana Sobhany, vice president of Medialets, an
iPhone app analytics company, though predicts that the site is doomed
for failure. She states, "There have been all these apps
downloaded in the App Store because it’s easy for consumers to
find, download and pay for apps. This model is new because
Apple has been training people how to download music to their iPods
for years. If you’re hoping to reach the mainstream, the best
you can hope for is your app catches on fire and charts high enough
for you to make a windfall. Essentially you aim for the
jackpot, and if you don’t hit that, it’s not going to make you a
living."

A more realistic danger, though, is legal
threats from Apple. If Apple can convince the U.S. government
to outlaw
iPhone jailbreaking on terrorist and drug dealing concerns, that
could spell the end for Cydia, as a site that obviously condones the
practice.

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quote: A more realistic danger, though, is legal threats from Apple. If Apple can convince the U.S. government to outlaw iPhone jailbreaking on terrorist and drug dealing concerns, that could spell the end for Cydia, as a site that obviously condones the practice.

Jailbreaking is illegal, already, by current laws. Apple wants it to stay that way instead of the EFF making a copyright exemption for it.

"If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it." -- SCEA President Jack Tretton